Goblin Slayer Side Story: Year One Vol. 1 Page 2
“Yes, fine,” High Priestess replied with alacrity, so as not to worry her solicitous companion. She rose.
“Well, if you need anything, let me know. That boy doesn’t understand the first thing about what a girl wants.”
High Priestess dismissed Female Wizard’s customary condescension toward the leader. The way the wizard responded by pouting, her cheeks puffed out, made her seem infantile and unreliable.
But as the leader of the back row, with command over the use of spells, everyone trusted her. High Priestess included, of course. And she was genuinely grateful that Female Wizard was willing to watch over her. She could overlook a little bit of peevish behavior…
“Well, she does have to decide whether to go forward or back, after all. It won’t do to stray far from the elevator.”
This quiet advice must have been offered by Bugman Monk. It wasn’t unusual to have two religious types in a single party. Bugman Monk always spoke carefully, perhaps because he was the oldest and most experienced member of the group. “In the fight that’s about to start, anyone who’s less than totally prepared would only be a burden.”
High Priestess didn’t wholly approve of his brusque tone, but they had known each other a long time. She smiled faintly.
She could hear a rustle as the bugman unrolled the map he had made and traced a path with one long claw.
“We’re about halfway along. We can continue down to the tenth floor or go back. I don’t mind either way.”
“Since we’ve been conservin’ our spells so carefully, we should still have a li’l leeway, right?” Half-Elf Thief sounded like the darkness of the labyrinth didn’t bother him at all. Uncharacteristically for a thief, he was standing on the front row, but he gave no indication of being tired. Or perhaps, like High Priestess, he was just hiding it.
Still, his cheerful tone lifted her own spirits, and for that, she was grateful.
“Then ’gain, vitality and endurance are different things. Won’t do us no good if our hearts ain’t in it. How ’bout a little more rest?”
“What’s this? Tired already? Hee-hee!” Female Warrior laughed meaningfully and playfully jabbed at Half-Elf Thief with her spear.
In conventional terms, Female Warrior was probably the most attractive of the three women in the party, and it was because of the tragedy in her past. High Priestess knew this, because she had experienced something similar. What was more, High Priestess thought Female Warrior incredible, because she never let her past show through.
“Well, that just won’t do,” Female Warrior was saying. “Don’t you want the girls to like you?”
“Aww, shaddup.”
So when Female Warrior whispered, “Right?” to her, High Priestess had to giggle.
It had taken time, but now they were all fast friends. They could never have survived the adventure that led them to this point if even one of them had not been there.
“What about you?”
“Wha?”
High Priestess cocked her head at the unexpected voice. The leader, who had been silently listening to their collective discussion, had suddenly turned the talk to her. “What about you?”
“I, uh…”
It was always this way. He looked lackadaisical, but he was considerate toward all of them. He would never make a decision based on just one person’s input but would make certain he had heard from everyone.
If not…how could I ever have followed him this far?
She had been able to reach this point precisely because of her companions. They had waited until she could rejoin them. Just as even now, they waited to hear her words.
“Let me see… There may not be a next time.” Thus, she had grown able to confidently offer her own opinion. “Personally, I want to finish this now.”
When he spoke, the party looked at one another and all nodded. Then let’s go.
“A final showdown with the Big Bad, huh? I like it. Can’t wait!”
“Heh! Heh! Heh! Heh! If that Demon Lord comes at me, I’ll chop him into tiny pieces!”
“Great. Then if we lose, it’s your fault.”
“Aw…”
“It’ll be all right. We all trust one another.”
We’d damn well better. The leader gave Female Wizard a wry smile and started walking.
High Priestess followed after him, clutching the scales and sword between her still-developing breasts.
She didn’t know how many of them would survive or how badly they would be hurt in this fight.
Every single one of those doing battle above might die.
But…
The world would be saved. Of that, she was sure.
It had been three days since his older sister had ceased to exist. That was why he decided to move.
His sister had told him absolutely not to move from where he was, but she was no longer his sister, any more than a hunk of steak was a living cow. No more than sausage was a pig, or an egg was a chick, or a chick a full-grown chicken. A chicken was neither its meat nor its egg.
The boy, only just turned ten, crawled carefully out from between the floorboards where he had been hiding. His pants were wet with his own excrement and unpleasantly itchy, but it was nothing he couldn’t endure.
More pressing was the pain of his stiff joints, and the agonizing effort of trying to keep the floorboards from squeaking. The clamor of the invaders was more distant now, thankfully, but still, there was no substitute for caution.
His sister had told him that he was always hungry, yet strangely, he didn’t notice the emptiness of his stomach now. Perhaps it was the mud he had stuffed into his mouth to prevent his stomach from growling at the charred aroma of those he had once loved. She had taught him that the soil here was edible, and that in times of famine, people sometimes ate it.
His throat was as prickly and dry as the days in high summer when he had played until noon; his head thundered with pain, his temples throbbing to the beat of his heart with a great, deep ache as if they were being struck repeatedly.
He didn’t bother to glance around the room as he scuttled over the floor toward the kitchen. A soup pot had been overturned, and a kitchen knife was missing. The water jug was shattered, but the bottom of it was still intact.
He leaned over it like a dog, slurping down all he could before he had to come up for breath. If he had known that simple water could be so delicious, he would never have begged his sister to add sugar to his drinks.
Then, finally, he sat down on the floor, not even taking the time to wipe his mouth as he looked around the inside of the house.
The dresser was in splinters, a violent mess, his sister’s clothes pulled out and scattered everywhere. Among the debris, he spotted the ribbon he had given her for her birthday. There were marks from little bare feet trampling all over it.
Their father’s bow, which had hung on the wall, was broken; their mother’s medicine bag had been torn apart and then thrown aside.
When was it that our parents disappeared?
He tried to remember what their mother and father had looked like, but as usual, he could summon only hazy images. His father, a ranger, and his mother, a medicine woman, had (so he was told) died in an epidemic before he was old enough to really remember them. His mother, insistent on caring for others, had caught the disease herself; and his father, who had been in the wilderness looking for something savory, had likewise fallen ill.
After that, it was his older sister who raised him.
And he had watched until the very end what had happened to her.
He braced himself against a ruined bedframe and slowly rose.
The room was a shambles, covered in mud and blood and something sticky.
Somehow, it just didn’t feel right. But why? He cocked his head, mystified, but it came to him immediately:
This was no longer his house. This house was no longer his home.
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He sought out the treasure chest hidden beneath the bed. The lid was smashed and someone had rifled through the contents. It had contained the pretty stones he’d found while playing with the girl next door, some pressed dry flowers, and a stick that was the perfect size to be a sword.
Now all of it was destroyed, stolen, lost.
Fishing through the box, he thought he had grabbed hold of his father’s dagger. It was a memento of his, with a hawk’s-head hilt, entrusted to the boy by his sister.
But all he could find was the dagger’s scabbard, and he tossed it back into the box.
When he went to leave the house, he felt something through the bottom of his shoe.
It was his sister’s purse. It was just a plain leather pouch, but it was sewn with a flower pattern. He took it in hand and heard the faint jangling of coins inside.
He tugged on the string and then hung the purse around his neck, tucking it inside his shirt. He made sure to close the purse tightly so that it would make no sound.
Slowly, he peeked out the door, making certain that they weren’t around, and then went outside.
The sky was a gruesome reddish black. Was it morning or evening? He couldn’t tell.
His shadow stretched out, and he stuck close to the wall of the house to conceal it, as if he were playing a game of shadow stepping. Eventually, he made it far enough along the wall to get a glimpse of the house next door. Not that he needed to look.
Hanging from the branch of a tree in their yard, where there had once been a swing he liked to swing on, were the bodies of the husband and wife who had lived there.
Other than his sister, it was the one thing he had been able to see in the past three days.
He hardly felt anything about it, though, as they no longer looked human to him.
What about her, I wonder?
He struggled with whether to look for her but soon realized it was a question he didn’t need to answer. If she had come back, it would have been by carriage, and the wreck should be around somewhere. If there was no carriage, it meant none had arrived.
It meant everyone knew this village had been attacked by goblins. Everyone knew, and no one had come.
He could hear excited voices in the distance. The crackling of a campfire. The sounds of cooking.
He clenched his fist and bit his lip, but no matter how hard he dug his nails into his hands, no matter how hard he bit down, he couldn’t make them bleed; it was so terribly frustrating.
If they had known he was standing here now, thinking these thoughts, they would only have laughed at him. That was all there was to it. By the time they attacked the next village, they would already have forgotten about him.
I should get out on the town road.
He had never been to town. He had no idea how far it might be or whether it was even possible to walk there.
But it felt like his only choice.
Then, suddenly, his knees buckled, and he stumbled. It seemed he didn’t have the strength to stand.
But I must…go forward…
He began to crawl along the ground, forcing his body to move toward the road. His elbows and knees got scraped raw, but he ignored them and kept moving.
He crawled single-mindedly down pathways, through bushes, past places he had been running happily around until just days earlier. He ignored the useless thoughts that bubbled unbidden into his mind; he focused on keeping his arms and legs moving.
A long time passed.
His surroundings gradually grew dark, which meant that perhaps the red sky earlier had been twilight. He didn’t bother to look up from the mud, even as stars came out overhead and the twin moons began to shine above him.
Soon, he would be at the fence that marked the border of the village. The one he and that girl had once snuck up to, only to be roundly scolded by his sister. If he could get past that fence, he would be outside.
It would be the first time he had ever left his village, and it would be because his village had been destroyed by goblins.
“GROBB…!”
“GOOBRRB! GRO!”
But it seemed things would not be so simple.
There they were.
They weren’t that much taller than he was, as if they were just some brats from a neighboring village. But they were far, far more terrible.
He knew because he had seen every minute of what they’d done.
He knew why these creatures, normally reputed to dress in rags, had fresh, new outfits this evening.
They were standing listlessly around the fence, spears in hand. Even the boy could tell they were guards. He had seen the adults in his village trading off the watch at the village gate, so he knew what a guard was.
Were there other paths that led out of the village? He tried to think, but his mind was hazy, and it was difficult. There were a few side streets he had discovered while playing, but he couldn’t imagine the goblins hadn’t found them as well.
He breathed as quietly as possible, trying to stay hidden, but suddenly, a pair of the little burning pupils turned in his direction.
He sees me.
The boy learned then that goblins could see in the dark, although the knowledge came too late to help him.
He grabbed a stone in his right hand and stood. He threw the stone. It might have been nighttime, but he had the light of the moons and the stars. The rock whistled through the air in an arc.
“GOBORR?!”
The goblin screamed, accompanied by a wet crunching sound. He tumbled to the ground, writhing, blood streaming from his nose. He clutched his hands to his face and made a sort of panicked whine.
Forcing his shaking legs to move, the boy picked up another rock and started running.
“GOOBRBRRB!”
The remaining goblin had been laughing at his companion’s misfortune, gesturing at him with his spear.
The boy knew he wouldn’t make it in time, but he didn’t care.
Now the other goblin, gibbering with rage, picked up his spear.
Die, you filthy monster, the boy thought. He gripped the stone as hard as he could.
The rusty spear tip rushed at him. It was clear to him that this would be the end. The only real question was whether the end would come here, immediately, or over the next several days…
“I see now.”
At that moment, there was a gust of cold wind from the west, such as the kind that blows at night.
He didn’t understand what had happened; he only registered a whistling, like a flute. Then the heads of the goblins in front of him went flying, and the sound changed to spurting blood.
He used his sleeve to wipe away the dark blood that splattered on his face. His older sister was no longer there to scold him for bad manners.
“The boy’s got nerve, if nothin’ else.”
At that moment, he thought he saw a hideous, wrinkled old rhea.
But no sooner had he registered the sight than a dull, heavy pain lanced through his head, and his darkness overcame his consciousness.
It was not until he came to that he realized he must have been knocked out.
And the end hasn’t come yet.
§
Another village destroyed by goblins.
It would never be anything more than another number in another report furnished to the king, who would never so much as know the village’s name.
Perhaps not even the gods knew what the village was called…
The sharp sound of metal echoes through the tunnel today, as it does every day.
Down and down they go, deeper and deeper into the ground, seeking the metal they desire.
Human and dwarf miners, diggers of all races, break the rocks with pickaxes, tunneling deeper below the mountain.
Treasure is what they seek: gold and silver and jewels sleeping beneath the earth. It’s not so farfetched to imagine they could become rich as lords overnight.
“Just about makes me feel like an adventurer,” someone jokes, and the men al
l laugh boisterously.
“Hope we don’t see no monsters down here.”
“It ain’t monsters who live this far down. Be more worried about Dark Gods and the like.”
Another chorus of laughter. They can’t forget the battle five years earlier; the best they can do is laugh it off.
What is life but an accumulation of days, after all? And can you really call it living if you don’t enjoy those days?
Maybe you didn’t find anything yesterday, but there’s always today. If today doesn’t work out, there’s tomorrow. And then the day after that.
The men knew well that the discovery of a vein of gold demands an accumulation of days.
Furthermore, finding gold is not the end of the matter. Next comes the digging. The delightful work of digging out the gold awaits you.
The miners have no time for gloom; in a way, they bear a burden of their own.
Think about it: without them, the nobles’ sparkling jewelry or the coins that change hands in the marketplace wouldn’t exist.
We are the ones who support the kingdom. It’s an encouraging thought in even the most grueling of endeavors.
There are those working so they can send money home, while others labor to repay the debt for some crime they committed. Others save their money, harboring a foolish dream of becoming adventurers; others still are earning something to support them on the road.
Not that anyone cares a whit about where these people come from or why. The only question is whether they do a good day’s work, and they all know it. Be you a criminal or the third son of a noble, in the hole, it doesn’t matter, as long as you can dig.
“Right, boys, how about we call it a day?”
“You said it!”
They dig from dawn till dusk, not that one can tell time down below. A great bell booms out from above; that’s how they know it’s the end of the workday.
There’s a general hubbub as everyone works their way out of the mine, tools laid across shoulders.
“Hrm?” one miner mutters, his pickax dug into the face of the wall.
“Somethin’ the matter?”
“Wait up. It’s stuck on something…”
He pulls as hard as he can. When he frees the ax, however, the end is missing.